What if Cities could be Decentralised and Biodiverse?

What if

cities could be decentralised and biodiverse?

ALEX

CHAI

MIHIRI

VIJAY

WHAT IF CITIES BECAME CARBON SINKS?

Lake Taihu lies approximately 100km west of Shanghai, covering an area of over 2000 square kilometers (almost the same size as Luxembourg). It is the third largest freshwater lake in China providing water to 30 million residents.

Decentralised - Biodiverse Cities

INDEX

PHASE ONE Data Collection p6

PHASE TWO Research and Concept Development p16

PHASE THREE Mid Semester Review p38

FINAL PHASE p83

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A

ccess is power. Access to jobs, access to services, access to open space and access to transportation gives people choices in life. Throughout the world there is increasing inequality in people’s ability to unlock these necessities in life. We therefore delved into the rules and implications of creating a decentralised city and their effectiveness of addressing these concerns. What if everybody lived in cities?

What if we have multiple cities instead of just one?

Could a decentralised city be the solution to socially sustainable development?

During our research we pictured the benefits of little Hobart-esque hamlets that had a walkable 2km radius. With the current demand to also change anthropogenic behaviour we were closely monitoring the environmental implications of a decentralised city, specifically CO2 sequestration of the region. Our strategy was therefore to introduce large scale afforestation projects, while also protecting pre-existing wilderness regions. While our focus was on the Taihu Lake Basin Area, this scalar approach meant that from a zoomed out perspective of China and even the world this would prevent the detrimental urban sprawl effects on the environment.

This project is therefore hopeful that a more equitable world is possible, while also giving agency to the environment as it begins to fight back.

concept sketches

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PHASE ONE Data Collection

For the first few weeks of semester as a class we collected the geographical location of essential services across the entire Taihu region. This allowed us to gain a better understanding of existing amenities, infrastructures and other critical elements that support this region.

Following this we calculated the GFA of each land use curve by utilising street view sources such as Baidu, Google and Bing maps.

We then used this GFA data as a proxy for the current population distribution. This meant we could make more informed judgments as to how to distribute the density and footprint of future cities.

Taihu region- existing density analysis

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Agriculture and wilderness

Waterways

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Civic amenities

Essential amenities

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Leisure amenities

Transportation amenities

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Commercial, residential and industrial

Population density analysis from the GFA of commercial, residential and industrial land use curves

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What if...

PHASE TWO

Research and Concept Development

new cities were built on top of old cities

China will absorb between 300-500 million people in the next 30 years and much of this growth is expected to take place in areas like the urban cluster surrounding Lake Taihu. Major issues in the region are often concerning water. As the manufacturing and agricultural sectors in the region have increased this has led to run off water polluting the lake. The resulting eutrophication on the lake has also damaged the tourism industry.

Catastrophic flood events and water scarcity has also had a big impact on residents in the region. These early concepts were some of the development strategies discussed while defining the project’s agenda.

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What if...

What if...

cities could float

cities were streamlined

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What if.....

What if...

we didn’t need roads

everything you needed was within 15 minutes.

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PHASE THREE Rules of the game

Distribution of amenities

Rule brainstorming time. The trick was to produce rules that had a variable value. This meant that any player, meaning anyone in a city from an architect or bureaucrat, to NGOs or planners, could apply their own agenda.

Restricted development

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Height restrictions

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DRAFT RULES OF THE GAME 30/03/2020

1. Cities can only accumulate more land use every X years.

2. 30 minute sub-centres, transportation and essential services

3. No part of the lake can be covered or encroached.

4. Non essential office spaces to go non existent.

5. Each sub-centre to be self sufficient with resources

6. Green belt as a barrier between two cities

Half a house idea - in order to accommodate density without increasing the footprint

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2020 - 2050 Evolution Distribution of cities 26

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Industrial core

Hybrid district- rural/urban

Detailed overview of decentralised city

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DRAFT RULES OF THE GAME 13/04/2020

Chosen Scenario description To see the future as decentralised for sustainable development. What will the city of tomorrow look like? How will people work and how will they commute?

With increasing density and growth of urbanisation, what if we start growing smaller rural towns and secondary cities to create a greater number of larger cities every 100 years that are all connected. This would discourage urban sprawl from happening in just one city. With increasing traffic congestion, pollution and affordability of housing, quality of life has declined. Lets begin not to think much in terms of megacities but megaregions.

1. There must me X km between cores 2. For every city, all essential amenities must be no greater than 60 mins apart 3. Urban cores that are X km from the lake must have X GFA 4. Urban core that are X km from the lake must provide X% of open space adjacent to the lake or water systems 5. The footprint of each urban centre must not exceed X distance from the centre 6. There must be only X number of cities

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1. There must me X km between cores

2. For every city, all essential amenities must be no greater than 60 mins apart

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3. Urban cores that are X km from the lake must have X GFA

4. Urban core that are X km from the lake must provide X% of open space adjacent to the lake or water systems

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5. The footprint of each urban centre must not exceed X distance from the centre

6. There must be only X number of cities

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PHASE FOUR Mid-Semester Review

Testing out different outcomes from our rules to see how these would impact population density, green space (agriculture seperated from wilderness), water, urban amenities, and transit infrastructure.

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1 For every urban core, all essential amenities must be no greater than 30 minutes apart

2 Each urban core’s footprint is limited by a radius of X distance 40

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3 There must be X km between cities reachable within 30 minutes

4 Urban cores that are X km from the lake 42

must have X GFA

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5 Urban cores that are X km from the lake/ecosystem must provide X% of open space

6 The total green space for the city must be 90% of land area or more.

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Vectors of Change

Vectors of Change

Road networks as a stage for community interaction Reduction in crime rates

People are encouraged to work from home reducing the need for transportation on a daily basis.

Reduced carbon emissions Green belts between cities caps horizontal expansion of cities

People moving from city centres for relatively cheaper rents

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Present situation

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OUTCOMES BASED ON THE RULES

Outcome 1

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Outcome 2

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Outcome 3

Considering the existing urban sprawl, the capacity for each urban core may vary but would be constrained to defined variables for easy accessibility to all amenities and work place within 30 minutes.

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Outcome 4

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Outcome 5

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Best Scenario Due to the amount of open space and wilderness created in the outcome while still maintaining accessibility.

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Worst Scenario Having equal distribution of urban cores might enhance the possibilities of two or more urban cores to merge and form a megacity which contradicts to our decentralisation idea.

Also the common centric pull within the urban cores may create more congestion.

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Huzhou city block - Waterways

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Huzhou city block - Agriculture and Wilderness

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Uptaquam

Huzhou city block- Commercial

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Huzhou city block - 2050 visions

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Huzhou - 2050 visions

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Huzhou city- 2050 visions

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MIDSEM REVIEW ( 08/05/2020 ) John Doyle For me, I feel like the last image. Do you want to just skip back a slide? I think that’s pretty sort of exciting in a way, but the previous slide where you were on the street looked, I feel like the sort of ambition of the project is not necessarily amplified. Like it’s not clear in this image, whereas the next one sort of it is like, I would have like kind of shape from the kind of. No man’s land between the two slides, so maybe keep it on the rest of them. The next slide, I think that’s sort of speaks to more to the effected outcome in a way.

Bridget Kean So, I am really happy you got to these images well, thanks for the presentation. It was coherent and it is clear that you all kind of talked through the various aspects. So that was great, I guess, for me. obviously this is kind of, because of my discipline, but I guess I became really interested when you were talking about open green space is whether you were referring to kind of recreational space or farm land, or what was the kind of qualities of that open space? And this last image is really suggested because it starts to indicate that there might be I guess different types of what’s kind of under the umbrella of green, but also that they might be informing those City units in different ways. So there’s different types of, potentially agriculture or, activities carrying there.

Then there’s also in these cases, potentially transport, what sort of transport networks or other types of, interactions and that each those kind of hexagons might have a different kind of quality of those storing from, wherever they kind of landing, across that region.

And so, that was really my comment, but I think it’s really exciting to think about how your City might incorporate modes of production, as well as, just kind of, living space. Thank you.

John Doyle I think, one of the things that we’re going to start, like I agree with all those points, one of the things we’re going to start thinking about is, definitely separating, the shades of green in particular, a lot of the sort of foundational work of this studio and the work that was done last year was about starting to think about our natural landscapes almost, begin to take on greater value, particularly when we start to think about, mostly kind of Delta landscapes, which this is in the Yangtze river, Delta, but also, to potential for reforestation to sequester carbon. And I’m sure that there’s probably mechanisms within sort of, a on Delta lists that also do similar things. So I mean, practically speaking. The interesting thing about this game is it starts to invert the relationship between gray and green and make, make that sort of green space is more of a priority, which is going to have to be, Neville Mars I have a quick comment. I really enjoyed it. It was very solid and thorough and, and a reasonable and incorporating the green space within your module is definitely a stroke of genius. And as you mentioned, John, is, very important for all kinds of reasons

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that’s a set up for, a bit of a tricky comment I want to make. I would almost suggest that the 15 minutes city and the 13 minutes city kind of joined forces. I can imagine that to 15 minutes city would then kind of, let’s say streamline the, village network of that region. And then the 30 minutes. A network does the towns, and maybe then you have been one hour, network of urban cores, and maybe even a, sort of metropolitan network as well, that ties into the rest of China, etcetera. So, something along these lines then, t you can really, feed into each other strength and make a very comprehensive proposal. But I realized logistically it might be a bit challenging.

John Doyle Yeah. I mean, there are a couple of projects which are quite similar and also interestingly, there’s a tendency across open most of them towards decentralization, which applies against my predilections towards sort of mentality and singularity. So maybe the, you know, the, the killing the father. But, in terms of its 15 minutes there, 30 minutes said city, I think. I was thinking about that kind of fight to the death . To say I put superiority and who had the most reasonable, outrageous proposal in the end. So, I think there’s, they’ve kind of arrived at this from different angles. One is really about proximity. The other one is about connectivity. I think the way that I kind of deviate could be quite interesting comparative study.

Neville Mars One more thing, John, that rendering that you didn’t like that one with the green space. I think maybe, it’s still quite crude, but it really drives home their core idea of, the, the 50% plus green space. And in this case kind of permeating at every skill right down to the, to the neighborhood level. So, I was quite intrigued by that. I would definitely, liked that the idea that the green itself has also higher hierarchical, almost like a fractal system running through the whole space.

John Doyle Which is interesting because it is kind of is already alright.

Ben Melbourne I think, One of Neville’s comments earlier was really interesting around, what do you keep and what do you get rid of, in the context of, dramatically increased, density or increased GFA in these areas? my kind of biases is kind of generally towards, the kind of retention of things. And how do you, kind of learn from the existing city, which I think is kind of a really interesting kind of area of investigation. But I think it’s an open question and this kind of scale, or starting to think of 50 years ahead or 30 years ahead in this case, but what are the things that you do keep, like, what are the pieces of infrastructure or landscape or like, and how do you make a critical assessment of those? are the roads important? Did that have any meaning or are they kind of, catalytic and how you think about the future of the city, etc.. And I think making that critical assessment is kind of part of the task. And I think your project starts to kind of privilege particular pieces of infrastructure versus others, which I think is fine. And I think its kind of interesting, like what that stuff’s to for choose,

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I am running a studio this semester looking really closely at Rotterdam. And it’s really, interesting that we have a person from the Netherlands, on the panel. but we’ve had a series of discussions around ideas of decentralization and a very particular model of decentralization that’s has a policy framework in the Netherlands around, Randstad. which is the ring city, the kind of policy frameworks that kind of set that up in the fifties and sixties, which was around, concentrated de-centralization I think was the term that they use, so it was around this idea that you, decentralized, but you have very particular nodal points.

So it’s not an even decentralization. It’s not an even distribution, but it’s a decentralization with kind of concentrations of particular points, which is really interesting. So it produces a very particular type of condition in the Netherlands. When our studio was around Rotterdam, which is a long, well in part of Western Rotterdam, which was, planned in the 1930s and forties. And it kind of looks in some ways at a different scale to what you’re proposing, but it looks similar to what you’re doing and that it is the canal and it produces a grain strip through part of the city. And then basically it had very expensive housing along that edge, which then cross subsidise their production of the green space .it was use to, also allowed for kind of work as a accommodation behind the, houses is that it’s kind of, it’s a social and, than kind of urban policy, which is really interesting. It could be interesting to look at.

Wanyu Hu Hi, I have to say something. I think that the presentation is a really, constant lesson and the entire logic and story is quite clear. That is quite successful. I have one question about, why are you choosing this a hexagon shape? It’s a little bit confusing to me. I don’t know why is there any reason behind this, a hexagon or any kind of shape is okay. It’s a one thing and the second thing. So, I quite like the strategy over the . You are cutting the, and the filling the green strip and the other nature in between. beside this, having you consider the difference between 2020 to 2050, is there any other changes within this 30 years cause of your, presentation, especially the one 2020 and 2050, there’s two, axe those ones . I only see you caught some pieces out, the, like the population change and the GFA change or the other environmental change, hasn’t really involved into the skin yet. So it would be nice if you in the midterm to carry on and to see if there’s some other aspects within the coming 30 years to be considered. Yeah. That’s it.

John Doyle As a, as an architect and a building person, the justification to green space is more compression and density in mixture. you know, I value green space and I think it’s important, but like by removing large chunks of the CDU, you’re like, you would assume that everything gets, I had it together.

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Ian Nazareth I think just quickly, I might just mention a few points that came to mind. Think, like, what I found really interesting was when I think you’re building into your opposition and very early on this idea that there is, there’s a potential for in a differentiation and diversity in the relationships that you’re setting up between the built form and the landscape and models would be questions of scale. And I think that does, you know, also start to think also, I’m curious about how that plays into scenarios, where you started thinking about the ideas of the growth moving forward may not be equal. It might be uneven. And, you know, thinking about how that idea that certain parts might be, a smaller grid, but might get higher density and some of the bigger patches might not necessarily change that much. So, I think playing a few of those against each other might be quite useful. Like I think the idea that they might be accelerated patterns of specific points, and that also might then lead you to have a closer understanding of what the variables are, what the factors for that growth might be.

I think the other point I was sort of curious about which, which is, as you know, you talked a bit about. You know, you’re getting to a certain point where, it starts to read like, a mega city and, I think it could play into two directions. So one is, you know, that you might encourage the mega city to happen at some point.

And at certain points you might discourage that. And I think that, again goes back to those idea of the variables and it could be about, easier framework trying to create this the barrier for the mega city do exist or are you kind of find the sweet spot within which all these characteristics, you might have the benefits of the mega city, but he might not reach the mega city.

I think it’s also trying to, you know, kind of find the phrasing around that because, you know, if you are kind of needing to prevent it from getting a big Is that a density problem is a resource problem, or is it a distribution problem? Because very often these very large agglomerations tend to become administrative issues and they’re not necessarily or squarely design problems.

So, I think trying to just think about what the motivation or the rational is, could be interesting in your scenario of moving forward.

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Further Outcome Studies

HIGH DENSE

RESIDENTIAL

MEDIUM DENSE

ESSENTIAL AMENITIES A

LOW DENSE

ESSENTIAL AMENITIES B

WHAT IF THE MERGING GRIDS OF URBAN CELL ACT AS A CONNECTING BRIDGE TO TIE UP TWO CELLS TOGETHER IN RECREATIONAL ZONE ONLY.

RECREATIONAL ZONE/ NO BUILT ZONE

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HIGH DENSE

RESIDENTIAL

MEDIUM DENSE

ESSENTIAL AMENITIES A

LOW DENSE

ESSENTIAL AMENITIES B

Voronoi pattern - looking at distribution effect

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Hexagon distribution effect

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FINAL PHASE

In order to get a more realistic sense of what these outcomes would look like we developed a grasshopper script that allowed us to redistribute pre-existing land use curves across the entire region. The parameters of these cities were determined by our rules. Also do note the way that the percentage of open space in each city is precisely determined by it’s distance away from the lake!

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OUTCOMES BASED ON THE RULES 1. Size of cities- 500 metres

The size of a decentralised city will be determined by the main form of transport used to access all amenities. A city orientated around a train network for example will cover a much larger area than a city designed for pedestrians Size of cities- 1kilometre

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Size of cities- 2 kilometres

Size of cities- 5 kilometres

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Size of cities- 10 kilometres

Size of cities- 15 kilometres

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OUTCOMES BASED ON THE RULES 2. Distribution of open space and built up areas

We have programmed the script so that cities that are close to the lake will have a greater percentage of open space compared to cities that are further away. The reason for this is to ensure all cities have access to open space while also attempting to reduce the footprint of cities adjacent to the lake. These drawings therefore highlights how as the size of the city changes the distribution of open space and built up area also changes.

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Distribution of open spaces and built up areas

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3. Wilderness

We have assigned the area between cities as wilderness, and thus the number of cities will determine the percentage of wilderness in the region. Pre-existing wilderness areas will also not be touched.

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4. Distribution of amenities - Existing

All essential amenities are to be relocated and distributed evenly within cities.

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Distribution of amenities - 2km city

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5. Distribution of density- 500 metres

We have kept the GFA constant in each city and used it as a representation of density. Due to the varying percentage of assigned open space for each city this means that a diverse and interesting built form will emerge between the cities as they accommodate the GFA in their own individual way.

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Distribution of density- 1km city

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Distribution of density- 2km city

Distribution of density- 5km city

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IMPLICATIONS 2km City Radius compared to Melbourne

A population density of 2400people/km 2 would be similar to Manhattan

Manhattan

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2km city

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Now focusing on the ecological implications of a decentralised city...China has the potential to have a huge influence on the world’s production and absorption of CO2 emissions.

In recent years China has been producing almost a third of the world’s CO2 emissions mainly from the agricultural and manufacturing industries for the world’s benefit.

Evidence of the government taking major steps to try to reverse some of the human-induced damage can be seen by their Grain for Green programme between 1999-2010. This meant farmers were paid by the government to plant trees on their land, as we can see on the left here. This has led to 25,200 square kilometers of land being afforested, this figure does not include lands converted to grassland where trees were not able to grow.

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0.9% may sound small, but considering China’s share of the global emissions of carbon dioxide and considering this is already a densely populated region it highlights the potential impact of converting land uses to wilderness.

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The value of biodiversity within an untouched wilderness area is priceless. It should be protected and recognised as a much greater asset contrast to recently afforested areas. There are many difficulties in defining what an untouched wilderness is exactly and how to protect it but to be clear in this instance we are referring to the pre-existing national parks or wilderness areas of the region indicated in the previous drawing here.

This project is not arguing that we necessarily have to match the number of trees planted to emission rates. As it might be well known China is currently importing most of its timber to service it’s manufacturing and furniture industries. The problem of mass scale deforestation and all of its associated issues of flooding, CO2 emissions, etc are thus being shifted to elsewhere in the world.

Taohuajie Forest Park (Taihu Region) Google Street View 08/06/2020 5:28pm

We want to be clear that this project is an argument for CO2 emissions and consumptions patterns to be dramatically reduced and by assigning these new areas of wilderness we are simply attempting to reverse the damage that has already been done.

Logs being exported from Russia to China. Source New York Times

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Urban Heat Island effect- 25km city

Urban Heat Island effect - 2km city

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Uptaquam

Huzhou city- 2020 visions

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Uptaquam

Huzhou city- 2030 visions

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Uptaquam

Huzhou city- 2040 visions

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Uptaquam

Huzhou city- 2050 visions

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Huzhou city- visions

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Huzhou city- visions

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Huzhou city- visions

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Huzhou city- visions

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FINAL REVIEW (10/06/2020) John Doyle Thank you, I have to comment on the grim reality on some of those images being almost too realistic for a regional Chinese city, fantastic stuff.

Nevil Mars My question is quite fundamental and goes to the very premise of this project. Therefore, I first want to say well done, the analysis is impressive, and I am very happy to finally see one team is using ecological sustainability parameters as the levers to pull and morph an urban region. That said, I didn’t see or hear how the decentralisation the distribution of your urban nodes can actually be beneficial. My questions are; So yes, you have sufficient density if it’s comparable to Manhattan, you could have something along the lines of autonomous urban nodes. But population in the previous presentation is certainly not the only issue at hand, amenities, jobs etc are other concerns. If you start distributing aren’t you just assuming much more virgin land than you would otherwise, that’s the first concern. The second concern is did you somehow incorporate the notion that you have all these distributed nodes, that I believe will not be fully independent. They also need to be interconnected so you actually augmented the amount of infrastructure in order to access and interconnect all these hubs. So amazing analysis and quite provocative but maybe for the wrong reason. Maybe you could comment on that.

Alexandra I might need you to repeat the first question, sorry my housemates are being quite loud.

Regarding the second point, there seems like there is already quite a large road network existing there already and we are not proposing to take it away. I guess we haven’t really delved into exactly what’s happening at those junctions or that point where it’s crossing through wilderness areas but those would be our main channels. As to whether it’s converted into something else, or it’s the channel where services need to move between cities [we are not sure yet]. But based on the fact there’s already quite a big road network.

Chai We were focusing on decentralised 2km nodes, the reason was because we are focusing on how all the amenities would be accessible to people living within that 2km urban node.

So there wouldn’t be a reason to be travelling from one city to another to have that sort of interconnectivity, because all the amenities would be accessible and made reachable to them in that particular urban city.

Nevil Mars That’s what I understood and I agree there are sufficient roads across the whole of China sadly, but the whole point is that we are going to ween off from roads and you would have to install some sort of extensive transit system maybe, maybe in the multiple nodal transit system. My first question was related to this idea that you are actually consuming more unbuilt land than in any other scenario I can imagine.

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That’s a bit simplistic maybe, as you are the only team that actually looked at CO2 sequestration related to land use, that’s why it’s so relevant.

Alexandra I guess I am still not quite understanding the question, that surely is a good thing we are intending to take as much wilderness land, sorry I am still missing your question.

Nevil Mars Is this configuration of a distributed network of nodes less land consuming considering there is already so much land being consumed by existing cities?

Alexandra Well the thing is we are taking away the agriculture and putting that into vertical farms, that’s how it’s really being taken out I guess and condensed. As in do you think it could be more aggressive in having less cities and actually having a much larger area of wilderness?

Nevil Mars I am quite convinced you can never stop the need or even curb the need for inter-hub access and mobility in fact even if these hubs are thriving, they are going to generate movement between them, so you need infrastructure so both your new hubs and the infrastructure between them will consume more space than the current situation.

Alexandra So what we need to focus in on, is those hubs and what that looks like? Whether it’s a layered transport network layered on top of vertical farms and what the built form of that would be I guess.

Ben Milbourne I have a question around geometry, it shows these decentralised hubs as a hexagon. It’s basically a hexagon grid distributed across the region and it looks very uniform. Is that intended as a diagram or as a plan?

Vijay We did look at that as just as a representation, but the cities are obviously taking a natural course of the surrounding context.

Ben Milbourne The reason for the question is around, it necessarily strips a lot of information that would start to shape the proposal. So existing transport networks, land form, city nodes etc.

My interest is in how that diagram becomes corrupted or perhaps a better term is more complex or more sophisticated and what information would shape those nodes? Because at the moment it’s highly diagrammatic which assists in the communication of the idea,

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but I am interested in how you would transform that and perhaps it’s in response to Nevil’s comment that the existing road networks are the things that start to shape where you position the nodes, how they relate to other ones etc. I would be hesitant to suggest that you are completely replacing all of the transport networks as well as all of the cities, as you would have a significantly increased environmental impact rather than a decrease. The question is around the existing infrastructures with new infrastructures.

Alexandra I wonder if we could maybe go to the outcome GIF that shows the distribution of open space and urban form. As this is made using the land use curves that are already there. So this is the 500m city, probably what would be quite interesting is looking at the 2km city on top of what is pre-existing, which I have to admit we haven’t actually done but to then see what the built form would look like. Looking at the zoomed in interactions of those would be really interesting.

Felix Madrazo First question, with one of your key rules is that you have a limit to the city, what is that size?

Alexandra We did the 2km radius as our final outcome Felix Madrazo Yes but, amount of people?

Chai 40million Felix Madrazo Wait, I don’t understand.

Mihri In 2km, 24,000people/km2 Felix Madrazo It seems at first glance and this is the challenge for you to prove us wrong, but it seems like your proposing a sprawl world with these mini villages. With the idea because it is lower heat island effect but if you continue this all over the world you might cover the whole continent. Maybe you still want to fight for it, but it looks like this is just going to contribute to the whole destruction of the environment despite this being your main ambition to protect it. I mention before two things the discussion between metropolis and sprawl and they chose something in the middle, clustered concentration. I think it’s important that you study those models. This village kind of model is very old, kind of garden city model. It’s missing some crucial challenges,

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when you said just because people have everything therefore they are not going to move.

You say people are going to move, I can prove you are wrong completely. Because you have all this mobility accessibility, people are going to move. It happens in the Randstad, in Belgium, in many places where people work everywhere, and unfortunately most people are going to drive a car. Unless you become the biggest most friendly transport system in the world, ah thank you but I’d rather drive in my BMW, your whole system goes out the window, because there seems there is some miscalculation in the effect.

Please give agency to nature, not only focus on people, why can’t we also just promote the expansion of the forest. You started with that but a bit too shy. I think there is a big agenda you could pursue that.

Finally there is the issue of agriculture, you are talking about 20million people and the amount of food they are going to require is massive. So how is it going to play a role of this are we going to just import it. You mention circular economy, are you really going to try address this? It’s ambitious but this is not only amenities you have to focus on more and more things. To make sure wilderness is secure otherwise your whole landscape is going to be filled with agriculture, fertilisers, roads blah blah, blah, and your wilderness is going to be gone. You’re not going to have a clear view of the landscape anywhere.

This is happening a lot in the Netherlands, they were fighting a lot for this green heart.

At some point you really need to have some areas there is nothing. It’s very difficult for planners to draw the red line, as it feels authoritarian. But at some point they feel cornered.

Unless they have a strategy. It seems like all these little dots, they stop after they reach a certain limit, population continues to grow and then what, it then densifies and then more and more dots start to appear. Or maybe turn to a different model, maybe it turns into a greener city. It needs this aspect of the time factor. I really agree that you are the first group that tries, but you raise the bar quite high so you have to also now respond to that.

Chai I think we got carried away with focusing on the 2km city and focusing amenity access within a walkable distance but initially the thought that we came up with for the decentralised concept. When we look at a megacity and the density continues increasing in a monocentric way and then there is a dead-end when the density has reached its maximum limit we think about other land uses and try to encroach on that land and this is the reason which made us think away from monocentric as a concept and make all the cities independent and dependent on themselves and everything they need is within a walkable distance.

Felix Madrazo I agree with the theory it sounds good, that you are opposing the megalopolis, but the counterproposal goes towards sprawl too much. have to make more and more wilderness, we cannot just preserve the old one.

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Alexandra One key bit that we said was that any pre-existing wilderness areas would not be touched.

This image that is up right now does not really show it, but if we zoomed out and looked at the whole of China that would be quite a lot of the western side of china that wouldn’t be touched because we are defining that as the pre-existing wilderness. So it really would do what you were saying, that these dots would form just in the areas we are saying are urban, and then it would densify within those 2km areas, and if planners were able to say this whole half of china we consider wilderness therefore it’s not going to be touched and therefore it wouldn’t really be covering the whole world.

Felix Madrazo Somehow I don’t believe your story because if you have a lot of dots and it seems like the green is there, it’s not really there, you’re just encroaching it, even if you are preserving it you’re isolating it. If you are talking from an ecologist he will tell you ‘thank you but with all your networks you have fragmented all the biodiversity corridors’, so you really need to study this a bit further. Maybe study some regions and start giving it some names, maybe you really have to go into the understanding that not everything is the same. Of course the system is beautiful in the computer because you just apply it everywhere but perhaps your answer has to add existing nature corridors and not only preserving the system but you have to improve it, but we are assuming we are making more and more emissions so we have to make more and more wilderness, we cannot just preserve the old one.

References

Cool Planning: Changing Climate and Our Urban Future Conference, 54th ISOCARP Congress “Ecological Space Planning and Implementation of Taihu Lake Region, China”, 1-5 October 2018, https://isocarp.org/app/uploads/2018/10/04-Taihu-Award.pdf Dayne, Suzanne “In China, Paying Farmers to Restore Forest Landscapes.” CIFOR Forests News, 20 Feb. 2018, forestsnews.cifor.org/53502/in-china-paying-farmers-to-restore-forest-landscapes?fnl=.

Deng, Lei, et al. “Past and Future Carbon Sequestration Benefits of China’s Grain for Green Program.” Global Environmental Change, vol. 47, 2017, p. 13.

Foldvary, Fed E. “The Completely Decentralized City: The Case for Benefits Based Public Finance.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology, vol. 60, no. 1, 2001, pp. 403–418.

Harvey, G.l., et al. “Qualitative Analysis of Future Flood Risk in the Taihu Basin, China.”

Journal of Flood Risk Management, vol. 2, no. 2, 2009, pp. 85–100., doi:10.1111/j.1753318x.2009.01024.x.

IEA. IEA Energy Atlas, 2020, energyatlas.iea.org/.

John Doyle Lots to think, I think it’s great. In some ways I feel like the scale of this project wasn’t sufficient we do need to assess these things. You alluded to it when you started thinking beyond the borders of this system towards the question of timber sources and the relative value of reforestation if you are going to import rainforest timber from Brazil for example.

Of course it’s a slippery one, and Neville and I have talked a lot about this, because any form of circularity starts to break down as soon as you realise that things are fundamentally open systems and we can draw this border but it doesn’t really end there. That point around fragmentation is completely true. Partially I fell in love with the relentless agrarian work of hamlet villages that are about the size of Hobart, so it’s very easy to get seduced by these things.

Jun, Ma. “Disaster in Taihu Lake.” 中外对话 China Dialogue, 8 June 2007, www.chinadialogue. net/article/1082-Disaster-in-Taihu-Lake.

Mars, Neville. 2019 Drone Footage SCMP. “Why Hong Kong’s Country Parks Are a Poor Choice for Housing.” South China Morning Post, 20 July 2018, www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/2123319/whyhong-kong-country-parks-are-poor-choice-public-housing.

Tian, Hanqin, et al. “China’s Terrestrial Carbon Balance: Contributions from Multiple Global Change Factors.” Global Biogeochemical Cycles, vol. 25, no. 1, 2011, p. n/a.

Nevil Mars One point to clarify, I think Alexandra’s last comment does really help to explain that they have this kind of scalar approach to their strategy and that makes it a lot more reasonable for me actually and better.

Union of Concerned scientists. “Each Country’s Share of CO2 Emissions.” Union of Concerned Scientists, 2020, www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emissions.

John Doyle Well in their defence they came to me with quite a larger city form, and I said nah. I sort of pushed back on that. They in devoted fashion didn’t throw me under the bus, usually when you do that to a group, some students say “well John told us to do it”. But they defended us to the last, so extra credit for that.

VERY VERY BIG STUDIO

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